


lucky one

by miso (moonseul)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, First Kiss, First Meetings, Gay Disaster Shiro (Voltron), M/M, Meet-Cute, Misunderstandings, Neighbors, Post-breakup Shiro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:22:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22916176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonseul/pseuds/miso
Summary: Shiro wonders how he’d gone months without catching a glimpse of his neighbor by the mailbox or by the parking lot, but one look now and he’s gone.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 93





	lucky one

**Author's Note:**

> *shows up with fic four years later*  
> i can't believe gay disaster shiro is a tag, but i'm glad it exists, because this is what the whole story is about :-)

“Tonight, my friends, is the night we make history!” Matt exclaims as soon as he swings the front door open. The unconcerned houseplant next to the door rattles on its uneven base. A cool breeze sweeps past Shiro’s feet.

Katie — Matt’s younger sister — comes through the door first, slapping her ticket to tonight’s festivities into Matt’s palm.

“55, 34, 21, 13, 8, 5,” Matt reads from the receipt and breathes out a low whistle. “Well would’ya look at that.”

Katie’s friends, Lance and Hunk, follow behind her, hair damp and flat from walking in the rain.

“Sorry guys, we got started without you,” Shiro smiles sheepishly, emerging from his bedroom with a second bottle of beer in his hands. 

This would be maybe the fifth— no, sixth time he’s hung out with the group ever since he moved down to the city with Matt, whom he’d met at college. They’d both accepted jobs at the same firm downtown, although in different departments, which to Shiro was a huge plus. All it took was a U-haul to move all of their belongings the day after graduation, and this apartment had been home ever since.

It almost seems like a long time ago now. Long enough that he’d finally got off his ass to print the pictures he’d taken from graduation. Turning back from his spot at the door, he took a quick scan of his sparsely decorated room — some posters here and there that he’d picked up from a craft fair in freshman year, a shelf of gundam models he’d hand carried all the way from his parent’s home, and said pictures. He had hung those on a yarn strung above his bed frame (there had been a YouTube tutorial involved). There was one of him with his parents, one with Matt, where they each held cardboard head cut-outs of themselves, and one with Adam, which he should really take down.

Occasionally, he still felt pretty shitty from the breakup. It was only three weeks ago that Adam had decided to call it off without warning, citing _long distance_ and a _fancy schmancy_ job in California, which Matt had scoffed at when he heard about it. What really drove a nail in the coffin was the fact Adam was now with someone else, as of this morning. 

> _I know we said that we’ll remain as friends, but maybe we should break contact for now. I’m seeing someone new._

He flipped over his phone, gravity shaking the screen to life, and looked at the time. There used to be a picture of him there too. Ugh.

He stuffed his phone into his back pocket.

Matt had decorated lavishly tonight, draping a preemptive _congratulations_ banner above the couch. Shiro contributed three bottles of prosecco, which he placed on top of the crochet placemats Matt’s parents gifted when they moved in. There had been a lot of planning for this, _relatively_ a lot, between the both of them, so he wasn’t going to let sour thoughts ruin his mood.

“I’ll be out in a sec!” he shouts right before slamming his bedroom door shut. 

He’s walking towards his bed to pluck off that photo of Adam when he hears a loud shriek and thud from outside the window. Concerned, he quickly strides over, and with a considerable amount of force the window pane finally budged, the small crack sucking the wind in with a deep inhale. Big, fat drops of rain pelt his forearm violently.

Shiro pauses for a moment, considering, then ducks through the gap and onto the fire escape. He takes a quick scan down up and down the street but it seems to be empty. 

With each growing second the rain got heavier and heavier, gradually soaking through his shirt and pants, but Shiro decides to stay a little longer, wringing his hands around the railing. Listening to the rain helped him calm his thoughts, especially when the sound of it drowns out the chatter in his head.

Outside, the city was covered with a thick veil, concrete and brick muddied with the warm white lights of building interiors. The pummeling of rain onto the asphalt reaches a crescendo, and all of a sudden feeling rather foolish, Shiro spreads his arms open, like one of those movie characters having a breakdown in the middle of a storm. Kind of like now, actually.

The metal winced slightly under his weight. He had laughed at stupid movie characters dancing in the rain, but now that he’s actually in the middle of it, it doesn’t feel too bad. It’s kind of nice actually. 

So now that he’s finally having one of those movie moments, he might as well revel in it for a bit. He spreads his arms a little wider for maximum dramatic impact. Some time, right about now, he imagines tuning up the volume on the soundtrack of his life and—

_Dude_

Shiro’s eyes widen.

_Dude, you’re blocking the rain._

He feels his body shrink into itself, wary of the attention, and immediately turns to trace the source of the sound. 

_Down here, genius_.

Shiro looks at his feet and crouches down to peer through the net-like grille. He’s searching for a face, but the only thing he sees is red, _firetruck_ red.

He squints extra hard, just to make sure he’s not being stupid.

“Are those… hot cheetos?”

There’s a rustling of the bag. And the sound of someone chewing.

“Mm. Yeah, want some?” The voice comes through clearly, even in the rain. 

Shiro goes down the stairs gingerly with both hands on the rails, as if walking on a suspension bridge. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting to find — some chips, yes, but not this — midnight waves gently framing the man’s face, a sharp chin, and eyes that in the darkness gleamed indigo.

He’s beautiful.

For a lack of a better response, Shiro just stands there with his mouth open. In the rain. Until the man sticks the bag of cheetos out and shakes it.

“You look hungry.” He says without even a flinch. Like this is the most normal thing on Earth, feeding your upstairs neighbor you’ve never met in your entire life. He just looks at Shiro, drenched silly in the rain, from his comfy spot on his windowsill.

Shiro eventually snaps out of it, completely sober at this point, and grabs a handful. Mouth full of mush, he goes, “Hi.”

The man’s lips quirk upwards, “Hey yourself, Mr. Emo.” 

Shiro might be knee-deep in one of the most embarrassing situations of his entire existence, but he doesn’t miss the way the man’s eyes skirt across his rain-drenched, white t-shirt. Hmm.

“Who you calling emo, Emo?” He challenges with bravado, pointing a dusty red finger at the other’s all-black ensemble. It’s cute, the way the guy pouts, looking at the offensive doc martens on his feet. “Touché.”

A beat passes. Shiro doesn’t know if he said something wrong, but then the man’s lips spread into a wide smile. It’s possibly the most adorable thing he’s seen in a while. Shiro could very well lose his balance and plummet to his death right then and there.

“So. Are you going to quit blocking the rain, or what?”

_Keith_ , Shiro learns, is spending the Spring in the city for an internship. He’s subletting the room below his until the end of the semester. Maybe longer, depending on what comes through for summer break. He’s athletic, wears shirts that are a little too tight for him, and has posters of mechas plastered across his wall. Shiro can’t help but notice the strength of his forearms, his wiry frame, as he stretches to retrieve a towel from his top shelf. 

“You’ve never heard of Powerball?” Shiro asks. He contemplates the propriety of stripping off his wet t-shirt, but decides to just use the towel to pat himself dry.

Keith is still looking at him blankly. “Is that like a video game? Pinball?”

“No, it’s um, like the lottery. The jackpot tonight’s the biggest ever. $1.6 billion,” Shiro starts to ramble. “Not that I’d win or anything, but my roommate has a thing about being part of something greater than yourself, and because we never do anything fun, so we’re having a preemptive Powerball winning party upstairs-”

“Right.. In the event that the planets aligned, and you have the winning ticket,” Keith laughs, disbelieving.

Shiro stops himself from sighing dreamily. “Yeah, something like that. If you want to come.”

Keith chews on the inside of his cheek, thinking. Shiro knows what it feels like to walk into something you’re not invited to. He knows exactly how it feels, pooling puddles in the middle of Keith’s hardwood floor. 

“But I didn’t buy a ticket,” Keith says, unsure. “And I don’t know anyone.”

Shiro’s having trouble explaining the strong desire to get to know Keith better. Take him on a tour of his room, maybe. Impress him with his Gundam collection... Fuck. 

“You know me. So come?”

Keith cracks easily, before Shiro even mentions his gundams, and he follows Shiro back up the fire escape, through his window, and back into the living room. Everyone looks up.

“What the fuck,” Matt gapes mid-chew into his barbeque chicken Dominoes pizza. “Have you had a guy in your room the whole time? And…” He trails off, scanning them both from head to toe. 

“Why are you all wet?” Hunk asks. “Wait. Actually, I don’t want to know.” 

“More importantly, Shiro,” Lance stands up from his chair abruptly, stomping over to the two of them. “Why are you fraternizing with my arch nemesis?”

He looks at Shiro with pained eyes. The “ _you stepped on my dog’s paws”_ type of eyes. “I thought we were friends.”

Keith blinks. “You’re my what?”

Shiro’s hands move to massage his temples. Sighing, he goes, “Lance, I have no idea what you’re talking about—”

“You so know what I’m talking about,” Lance exclaims, face turning red. He turns to Keith, releasing the unbridled frustration he’d been harbouring the past fall semester, “You’ve been taking _my_ spot in the library all semester.”

Lance growls, “I’ve been sitting there all of freshman year, I’ve been sitting there so much that that chair probably has an imprint of my ass. Hunk, back me up here.”

“Yeah!” Hunk cheers from the couch.

“Okay but there are plenty of seats in the library, just pick another one” Keith replies, rationally. It’s a perfectly sensible suggestion that Lance gawks at for no good reason.

Shiro puts his hands in the middle of the two. “My friend Keith here has brought a gift to offer as a truce,” he pauses to nod at the cheetos, still in Keith’s grasp. He plucks the bag out of his hands and shoves it into Lance’s. “Here.”

“Shirooo,” Lance whines, shaking the bag with displeasure. “It’s already open! And wet! Ew.”

Lance is quickly distracted by Hunk opening the second box of pizza. Pretty soon, everything feels like it’s returned to an equilibrium. The characters on TV are going on mindlessly about some inane thing, and you’d think that no one was paying attention to this rerun, but then Hunk bursts out laughing at the punchline. A warm sensation starts to build in his stomach, and when Keith leans into Shiro’s space, Shiro positively _burns_. 

“I thought you said the pizza was fancy,” Keith whispers, so only Shiro can hear.

Shiro looks down at his slice, mockingly offended. “It _is_ fancy,” he insists, raising up a slice to examine like a specimen. “It’s a garlic bread crust, Keith.”

They’re in the middle of a commercial break when Shiro realizes that Keith is pressed up against him on the couch. It’s about another forty-five minutes until the lottery results get announced on the Internet and Shiro’s on the precipice of losing it. There’s nothing to stop his mind from humming, flitting impatiently through multiple scenarios: Keith resting his head on his shoulder, Keith inching up to his ear to whisper a snarky comment about whatever’s on TV, or, god forbid, the tips of their pinkies accidentally brushing as they rest side by side on the upholstery.

Shiro doesn’t remember the last time he’s felt this way. It’s the thrumming anticipation of something good that’s about to happen, nudging him part any self-doubt, any hesitation. Just a couple hours ago he was feeling stuck, but this is a welcome distraction. All of _this_ , he thinks as he starts to sweat the more he fixates on Keith’s body heat.

The toothpaste commercial almost comes to a close, and Shiro thinks _it’s now or never_ , lurching forward with all of his subtle grace to down the last of his beer. Knowing that time was of the essence, he figured that it was best to pull Keith away while his friends were distracted.

“So uh, Keith,” Shiro’s voice cracks, traitorously. He shrivels up a bit inside for the poor start, but it’s too late to stop now. He leans over, breath feverish on the other’s neck. “Do you wanna see my Gundams?”

And Shiro may be a little drunk, liquid courage-enabled, as he liked to call it, but everything still feels crystal clear, his senses heightened.

“I’ve been waiting for you to ask me all night,” The corner of Keith’s mouth curls, and he drags Shiro away by the hand and into his room, right as the tv show returns from the commercial break. 

They’re standing face to face. Shiro can measure this distance in breaths, the approximate angle he needs to tilt his head. A car zooms past then — its rumble driving straight to his core, its headlights pouring in through the window and swelling the space, albeit momentarily, with a brazen shade. Briefly, he catches the pink dusting Keith’s cheeks. A blink later and they’re plunged back into the darkness, black as a closed eye.

Keith begins to sink — _why is he going on his knees?_ — and Shiro lets out a panicked laugh, before he realizes that Keith is scooting towards the Gundam case on his bottom shelves.

Right. Shiro flips the light on, stupidly.

“You assembled all of these… wow,” Keith admires closely, hovering a hand over it before asking Shiro if it’s okay to touch. He asks multiple questions, from the price of the model kits, to the process of assembling them. 

Earlier, Shiro might have been upset about his toy robots, of all things, upending his plans for intimate one-on-one time, but the conversation is comfortable. It doesn’t feel like he’d only known Keith for the past two hours. In fact, he can’t recall the last time someone took an interest in one of his hobbies and not called it one of those “nerdy” things, like it was something he couldn’t be proud of.

“I’d always wanted to try building one myself,” Keith continues, looking up at Shiro. “It just didn’t make much sense to, y’know, have so much stuff,” he pauses, shifting his eyes away. “I moved around a lot.” 

Shiro nods. He doesn’t want to say anything gratuitous, pulling himself back from reading between the lines because it shouldn’t make a difference, anyway. “We can build one together, while you’re still here,” he offers.

There’s a shout of his name from the living room, dragging out on the O. Must be Lance.

Matt gives him a knowing look when they emerge from the room. Shiro narrows his eyes and shakes his head, mouthing _you know nothing_.

“Come on….. Come on….” Pidge drums his fingers impatiently on the coffee table, compulsively refreshing Matt’s browser every five seconds. On the fifth try, the website spits out the night’s winning numbers. A bit anticlimactically, after all the build up. Several among them press their faces close to the screen. Shiro opts to hang out back with Keith.

“Oh my god ohmygod ohmygod I got one of them,” Hunk hyperventilates. 

“What, let me see,” Lance pushes his way into Hunk’s space and scrutinizes his numbers. “It doesn’t count if that one number’s not the powerball number,” he continues, frowning.

Keith’s watching for his reaction, Shiro realizes, when he lifts his head up. Dark, indigo eyes that looked even more stirring in the light.

“Any luck, big guy?” He asks, looping around the dining table to help himself to something to drink, all the while not breaking eye contact. He mixes a vodka cranberry, leaning heavy on the juice, for both of them.

Shiro’s lips give into a sweet, ear-splitting grin, every thought of winning the lottery long forgotten. 

“I have to admit, I don’t really know how to play this game.”

It’s a little past two a.m. 

Shiro’s toed slightly past his self-set limit for the night, a consequence of Matt pulling out the “big guns” to celebrate the spectacular loss. He knows it when Hunk holds up the bottle of half-empty whiskey to ask why it’s called a _Fighting Cock_ bourbon, and the funniest thing he can think of is cock in a cup. Which he does say out loud.

They eventually call it a night when they run out of that too.

One by one, the guests start peeling themselves from the couch. Pidge, Hunk, and Lance come as a set — they leave together in an Uber back to campus.

“I, uh…” Keith starts, pausing mid-sentence to gather his words. “I gotta leave through the window,” he finishes, limp arm pointing dumbly at the window. 

It takes the strength of two to jerk the window upwards, the sudden force from the wood budging sending Keith crashing into Shiro’s arm. He holds him steady, amidst repetitions of _god, I’m not a lightweight I swear_.

“Seriously,” Shiro says, his two hands still firmly planted on the other’s shoulders. “I’m glad you came.” 

Keith chuckled, a little in disbelief, “Sure, Shiro. Like me joining the party made all the difference.” He sat back on the window ledge, turning his eyes onto Shiro, almost as a question. It seemed like Shiro had something else to say.

“Well, uh… you’re funny, like the comments you make sometimes, without realizing it,” Shiro starts, shoving his hands into his pockets to hide how sweaty they’re becoming. “And you like robots. That’s cool in my books.”

“So you’re saying I’m a nerd—”

“No! What I’m saying is that I like having you around,” Shiro considers testing the waters, but his stupid mouth is already going for it, “You’re cute.”

Keith sucks in a breath, surprised. He looks down at his ratty black tee, jeans, and mismatched socks, confused.

“You think I’m cute?” 

“ _I think_ you’re exactly my type,” Shiro blurts out straightforwardly.

Keith’s eyes change then, a dawning realization, growing dark and dangerous.

“Come here,” he calls, hand already fisting in Shiro’s shirt to pull him close. Keith’s palm on his chest is a dull, comfortable warmth, fanning outwards and up his nape. His heart is beating so loud in his ears.

In reality, the kiss is the barest of touches. Light and testing. Keith parts to wait for Shiro’s reaction. Already, Shiro forgets what his lips feel like, but he wastes no time to remind himself.

To his surprise, he approaches Keith patiently, snaking hands around the other’s waist. Maybe it’s self control, or just the thought of Keith’s small waist that makes Shiro want to be careful. Keith, on the other hand, is impatient, surging upwards to meet Shiro again, hands winding around his neck and into his silver hair to give it a _telling_ tug.

Shiro sighs into the kiss, letting himself be pulled closer, closer. He’d willingly fall into Keith’s orbit, god be damned.

Before he knows it, he’s being backed onto his bed, tipping over when he loses his balance. Keith is light and barely there, despite his whole weight on top of him, but he makes his presence known with light, teasing kisses along his jaw and down the curve of his neck.

He loses his shirt along the way, and Keith makes it a point to trace with his fingers each blooming nebula across his chest. He leans back to take in the view, making an appreciative hum. Then, he sneaks back into Shiro’s space, just to remark, “Asian glow. Heh.”

He’s so close now. And so, so smug.

“Quit it,” Shiro says, all bark but no bite, clutching his ear as if it were licked wet. _It tickles_ , he continues, muffled by pressing his lips on Keith’s shoulder to stop himself from laughing.

There’s still a taste of cranberry on Keith’s tongue, saccharine sweet and sticky. He pours himself into another kiss, feeling himself melt and grow lazy. Keith’s hair is a mess now, tufts of inky black hair coming into his vision. He sees Keith in parts: button nose, pupils blown wide and black, cherry pink lips, swollen and wet. The sight of it goes straight to his dick.

“Off,” Shiro is grinning so hard it hurts.

“Okay, okay,” Keith’s clumsy hands meet Shiro’s. “You gotta let go of me first.”

He sits up on Shiro’s lap, eyes fluttering close momentarily to pull his shirt over his head. If Shiro thought Keith just looked boyish before, he was dead wrong now, eyes fixated on his lean physique and the contour of his abs.

For a moment, Keith looks away at the wall, as if to calm the wild beating of his heart. He’s still clutching onto his shirt, growing silent, so all Shiro can hear is the twin heaving of breaths.

“ _Oh_ ,” Keith mutters, his voice low.

Shiro blinks, his mind hazy. The air in the room stirs, sending a strong chill over his skin.

“Oh Shiro,” Keith says again with a crack in his voice, “You’re making a mistake.”

Before he realizes it, Keith has already pushed himself away and off the bed, quickly tugging on his shirt and pulling his shoes on. Shiro sits up in bed, the sudden jerking motion inducing a menacing throb to his head. “Keith, wait, what’s wrong?”

Keith is already halfway through the window, and he turns back, crouching, to address Shiro. His face is covered in shadows, but he doesn’t miss the red-rimmed eyes.

“You’re making a mistake and you don’t even know it.”

“Keith-”

“Please don’t follow me, Shiro,” Keith interrupts him. With that, he pulls down the window pane and descends the fire escape, sounds of metal clanging with every heavy step.

The temperature in the room seems to have dropped several degrees, with the way Shiro’s hands have gone cold and clammy. He stumbles to the window, tracing Keith’s every step, boring holes into the spot where Keith had last crouched at. The longer he looked, the more his vision seemed to blur, until all he could see was the half-formed mirror of himself.

When he woke up, disoriented after a night of unsettling dreams, Shiro couldn’t name where he was, or who he was, until he caught sight of his boxish window. It looked as if it were carved out of stone, letting sunlight through in straight, blinding beams. He turns over to look at the clock, grimacing at the tacky feeling of dried sweat on his skin.

He’s in the middle of microwaving a frozen breakfast sandwich when Matt cracks open his door, peeping his head out surreptitiously.

“The coast is clear, Matt,” Shiro sighs. His fingers are massaging his temples, the slight pressure momentarily soothing his headache.

Matt mumbles something which is a little hard to hear over the aggressive whirring of the microwave. Shiro doesn’t hear him the second time either, so Matt resorts to tip-toeing across the kitchen to repeat, “Where’s _the boy_?” 

He makes unsubtle gestures, pointing at Shiro’s bedroom door.

“Not there,” Shiro replies. His head’s starting to clear a bit, probably from the sweet, heavenly taste of a greased English muffin. 

Matt jerks his head in the direction of the bathroom and wiggles his eyebrows.

“Nope, nuh-uh,” Shiro shakes his head. “He left last night.” 

The regretful thing about supermarket-bought breakfast sandwiches is its lack of structural integrity — the folded egg slice is slipping down and almost out of his hold, and the muffin might break from how hard he’s gripping it. In seconds, the egg plops onto his plate. Shiro sighs, trying to reassemble it so that he can shove it all into his mouth before it happens again.

Sensing Shiro’s silence and struggle with the poor sandwich, Matt pulls out a chair to sit across him. “You okay, bud?”

Shiro scrubs his face over with a clean palm and groans, “I’m okay. So okay. _Super_.” 

“So. Totally not okay.”

 _Ah, fuck it_ — Shiro tells him everything. Matt’s seen Shiro at his highs and lows, and if he has to admit, he’s being more pulled together than he was at his last breakup. But that was after months of dating. This — this was only after one night. Maybe it’s the speed at which they fell together. It’s hard to even imagine that he’d been living above Keith all this while. How he’d gone by months without catching a glimpse of him by the mailbox or by the parking lot, but one look now and he’s gone. He’s devastatingly pretty, and the attraction between them was obvious, but more than that, he looked at Shiro for who he was, not once pandering or uncomfortably aware of his prosthetic arm.

“Listen,” Matt cuts Shiro’s thoughts off before they descend in a downward spiral. “So what if he’s exactly your type, laughs at your stupid jokes, and likes the same robo-shit you do?”

“Matt you’re not making me feel any better.”

“You don’t why he freaked and ran away. Big deal! Maybe he had a good reason?” Matt shrugs. “He left something in the oven. He forgot to turn in an assignment. I don’t know. But I do know something.”

Matt waits for Shiro to really pay attention before he continues, “I saw the way he was looking at you last night, Shiro. And the way you looked at him too. Honestly, disgusting. In my own home—”

“Hey I live here too—”

“Point is,” Matt continues, reaching across the table to plant his hands on Shiro’s shoulder. “There is no way that kid’s not into you. He probably doesn’t hate you. You can fix this.”

“There’s no way to fix this!” Shiro yells at Matt, all the way from his bed. He doesn’t hear a response, so he yells again for good measure.

He’d tried earlier to go down the fire escape to see if he could catch Keith in his room or by his window, but the windowpane was bolted shut and the blinds were drawn closed. He had also tried to find a way to message him — Facebook, Twitter, _and even_ LinkedIn… 

Keith’s at home though. He can tell from the dull bass pulsating through his floorboard, and wonders if Keith had heard his nervous pacing up and down his room.

“Shiro, I’m busy,” Matt whines as he’s shuffling towards Shiro’s bedroom. “I’m on the verge of a breakthrough on my code, so this better be important.”

He strolls up to the foot of Shiro’s bed, looking judgmentally at the way he’s made an impression of a snow angel in his crumpled sheets. “Come on,” Matt swats at Shiro’s feet with a magazine he’s picked off the floor. “Pull yourself together. Don’t make me call my sister. She can be very persuasive.”

He swats at Shiro’s lifeless leg again.

“Cleaning is catharsis— your room needs Marie Kondo-ing anyway. You can start with removing that picture of Adam’s ugly face on your wall. Can’t believe it’s still there,” Matt gawks. “What the fuck, how do you even sleep at night?”

Adam’s ugly face… on his wall… The gears in his brain suddenly kick to life.

He rises slowly to meet the offending picture on his wall. Everything clicks now — the look of hurt, undisguised surprise, the running away. Keith must have thought Shiro was cheating on someone else with him. 

The consequences of living in a mess had finally caught up to him. 

“Fuck me, he thinks I’m a cheater,” he mutters, slow and solemn. 

Figuring the reason why Keith’s shut him out still does nothing to address the communication issue, unfortunately. He doesn’t see Keith in any of the shared spaces of the complex, making it impossible to find a good time to explain himself. Even if he’d already lost interest in a guy like him, he’d still like to apologize for the misunderstanding.

He does start to clean up his room, making his rounds to various shelves to decide what to toss. It’s when he comes back to the rack of gundams, memory of Keith kneeling excitedly before it, that he gets the brightest idea he’s had the whole week.

He goes on Amazon, clicks on next-day shipping, and bites the bullet.

Overnight, the sky swells to an alarmingly deep grey. The clouds are tall and fat, towering over building tops like giant waves. Shiro watches them from his office desk sporadically through the day, hears his coworkers talk about the biggest rain of the whole winter, and thinks about whether the deluge will draw Keith out by his window. 

He holds onto his umbrella all afternoon, even when he goes outside during his lunch break, but the sky holds it in for a good while. It’s only when he’s back at home that the wind’s begun to pick up, puffs of wind bursting through the half-bald trees to shake their leaves free. 

_You do this often?_ Shiro had asked when he stepped inside Keith’s bedroom. Keith had looked away, wearing the kind of embarrassed look one would have when caught in the spotlight. _It’s— it’s nice to watch on a bad day._

Keith was onto something there, Shiro thinks, watching the leaves somersault in the wind. One drop, then two, and suddenly it’s pouring. Shiro listens to the tranquilizing rhythm of pitter-patter on the fire escape, growing sleepy in his bed. He feels like he’s carried somewhere far away on the steady drum of a locomotive, and it halts to a stop.

He cracks his eyes open, and Keith’s there, like a dream. 

He blinks again. Keith’s waving at him, other hand holding up an umbrella. There’s an Amazon package tucked in the crook of his arm. 

Shiro scrambles to let him in, catching Keith when he fumbles on the way down. The collar of his shirt is slightly askew, loose and hanging off his shoulders. 

“Hi,” Keith says casually, as if he’s just stepped off the train, into a new day. He’s literally holding a million things. Shiro wants to help, but his brain has yet to recover from the mere sight of him.

“I got your message,” Keith continues. Maybe it’s that golden hour glow — in the daylight Keith somehow looks happier, younger. He’s looking up at Shiro with the Amazon gift receipt thrust directly before him:

> _Hi Keith, it’s Shiro. I like you. But I might have given you the wrong impression. I’m sorry — I’m not a cheater, it was an old photo that I should’ve taken down a long time ago. I can explainletmeknowifyoudwanttotalk?_

Shiro grits his teeth, cringing in embarrassment. The memory of him hunching over his laptop is too fresh to erase.

“I ran out of characters at the end there,” he offers weakly. 

“Mm yeah, could tell,” Keith chuckles, flipping the gift receipt over to read it himself again. “Let’s talk.” 

He shakes off the remaining drops of water on his forearms, and they both sit at the foot of Shiro’s bed, awkwardly far apart. Keith sets the Amazon box on the ground, flaps jagged from being torn open with a key. A glossy, red gundam model kit peeks through.

“You got me this. Why?” Keith asks.

Shiro takes a deep, steadying breath. “I needed to talk to you. I needed to apologize.”

“You sent me a message on a gift receipt?” Keith snorts, just to express how absurd it all is. “You could’ve knocked on my door?”

“ _Oh_ ,” Shiro replies numbly. Why hadn’t he thought of doing that?

“I’d gone through a breakup a while ago, and it’s taken some time to process that and clean up my room, which explains the picture you might’ve seen… I don’t really know how else to explain it. I’m sorry for what I put you through.”

Keith hums, listening attentively. A brief pause, and he mutters, “Good.”

“Good?”

Shiro watches Keith’s throat shift, the curve of his Adam’s apple bobbing. 

“Honest to god, I thought you were using me,” Keith admits. “But I’m glad that’s not true.”

Shiro reaches out to Keith’s hand, tentatively, and Keith lets him interlace their fingers. His fingers are calloused, but the back of his hand is supple, pliant in his grip.

“Can we start over again?” Shiro asks. “Hi there, I’m Shiro. Would you like to go on a date with me?”

Keith sneaks a glance at the model kit on the floor, positively beaming. “I think I’ve got an idea.”

To nobody’s surprise, they spend the next three hours fully concentrated on assembling the toy. Midway, Shiro slips out of his room to pick up his takeout, sneaking Matt a high-five to celebrate when he passes his bedroom.

He lets Keith do most of the work, chiming in only when the other gets stuck. He works quietly, eyebrows furrowed in concentration, and Shiro appreciates this. It’s nice. Comfortable. Shiro doesn’t need to pretend to be smooth ( _you knew the path to get straight to my heart_ , Keith argues, waving a dismembered gundam leg).

Keith pushes himself up and stretches his body out in front of the window, easing the kinks in his shoulder from hunching over the floor for so long. Shiro hovers behind him for a moment to watch. The rain is so light he can barely see it, but the humidity clings to his skin and makes itself known.

“You’re standing in the way of my rain,” Shiro teases, sneaking his arms around Keith’s torso. 

Keith spins around to catch the end of the sentence, holding Shiro in place as if to measure his presence. Shiro’s tall, and it throws a shadow over Keith’s face. An intimate dark.

“You’re standing in my light,” Keith whispers softly, drawing closer.

Shiro leans into Keith’s space first and captures his lips, sweet as he last remembered it. He cups Keith’s face in his hand, angling his jaw upwards. Keith’s lips are warm like honey, but his hands are cold up the back of Shiro’s shirt, and Shiro feels it, all the way down to his fingertips like a tremor. 

“Mmf,” Keith pulls apart to catch his breath, he doesn’t go far. Shiro’s still holding him close, dangerously close, teeth grazing the thin skin of his neck.

He trails feather light kisses along his jaw, slowly, gently. Time stills — the way Shiro’s always thought it would, in the moment, when it feels so surreal you could just take a step back. 

“Did I ever tell you, how hot I think you are?” Keith groans, hands scrambling up Shiro’s back, grabbing his arms, his abs, his everything. “Showing up at my doorstep with a see-through white t-shirt. Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Shiro presses his face into the crook of Keith’s neck, trying to suppress his laughter. If only Keith knew. There’d be so much to share with him — long nights in the same bed listening to the rain, washing over into early mornings, when Shiro would wake before Keith, and he would spend hours just watching the fabric of his shirt pull across his back as he breathed. But for now. His hands are unmoving, caught on the wild curls at the base of Keith’s nape, winding around his fingers like tendrils. 

“Maybe you’re going to run away from me again,” he teases, gasping when Keith catches his arm. His eyes are unwavering, as if to say: Don’t you dare look away. Here I am.

“Won’t be able to shake me off that easily, big guy,” Keith breaks into a sly, dangerous smile. 

_Well_ , Shiro thinks, _then you’d better hang on_.

**Author's Note:**

> the idea of meeting your neighbor on the fire escape was inspired by a scene from ling ma's severance, which ironically is about a pandemic. how befitting for this time of the year lmao. hope everyone stays safe!
> 
> twitter @refois


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